2014 Toyota Highlander

So long, Spongebob: This minivan surrogate is now more stylish.

Toyota doesn’t want its all-new 2014 Highlander to be painted with the same “Mom Bomb” brush that’s ruined sales of minivans. So for 2014, Toyota’s wrapped its huge-selling crossover SUV in more-angular sheetmetal designed to attract more dudes. There’s also a bolder grille that’s slightly reminiscent of the brutish snout of the full-size Tundra pickup, as well as prominent chrome eyebrows, which sound like something Lady Gaga wishes she had but are in fact far more tame. The wheels are bigger, too, with the base rollers going from 17 to 18 inches, and they sit beneath more-muscular wheel flares. Wider by 0.6 inch and longer by 2.7 inches, the new Highlander indeed strikes a somewhat more macho pose versus the outgoing 2013 model, although it stops short of providing a Hummer-like hit of testosterone.

Inside, the Highlander’s interior has been “Avalon-ized” with more soft-touch materials on the dash and doors. Toyota admits to tooth-and-nail competition from Korean nameplates invading the lower end of the mid-size crossover segment, so the Japanese firm has stirred in more features and refinement to move the Highlander a bit closer to Lexus RX350 territory. Toyota also says it stiffened the Highlander’s body, especially in the roof and B-pillar area. Finally, it says it made a point of making the 2014 model quieter, adding a new acoustic windshield, a thicker front dash-panel silencer, and under-carpet sound deadening.

Newfound Stash Space

From the extremely useful yet also supremely boring department comes a new dashboard “shelf” above the glove box running from the passenger’s door to just above the driver’s right knee. It’s handy for stashing cellphones, parking/toll tickets, handcuffs, and other detritus. The new tambour-top front console is a deep, 24.5-liter well that’s capable, as Toyota demonstrated, of holding 38 12-ounce cans of your favorite beverage. The HVAC controls have been simplified, and there’s a new optional panoramic sunroof as well as a heated steering wheel and heated-and-cooled front seats. A new eighth airbag lives—hopefully permanently—in the front passenger-seat cushion, and there’s a long list of new nanny-style tech including auto high-beams and blind-spot, rear cross-traffic, pre-collision, and lane-departure warning systems.

The Highlander now features a driver information screen between the tach and speedo as well as touch-screen controls for the Entune infotainment system in the center stack. The panel there measures 6.1 inches on base models and 8.0 inches on XLE trims and above. Standard on the fancier models—so XLE on up—is Driver Easy Speech, a one-way PA system to the speakers in the back of the bus. The idea is to allow you to yell at your kids in the rear two rows more effectively. Or, if you’re insane, bark at the pallet of Oreos you bought at Costco.

Eighth Man Out

Speaking of small fry, Toyota’s upped the new Highlander’s passenger capacity to eight. Replacing the previous model’s strut rear suspension with a new trailing-arm double-wishbone setup eliminated the intrusive rear strut towers and allowed for a third-row seat that’s 3.7 inches wider. The third row still isn’t a place you’d assign to anyone you like, although a second-row seat that slides fore and aft does allow you to more carefully parse out legroom between the rearmost rows. Toyota found more space by thinning out the front seatbacks, and all seats have been moved forward slightly, contributing to a 34 percent increase in cargo space behind the final row. And Toyota remains the only carmaker that still offers a rear liftgate with independently opening glass.

The 2014 Highlander gets its muscle from the same powertrains as last year. A 185-hp, 2.7-liter four-cylinder is standard on the price-leader LE model, but most Highlanders will be sold with the 270-hp 3.5-liter V-6. The standard six-speed automatic features manual control, a Snow mode, and hill-start assist. Also standard is Eco mode, which flattens throttle response and forces earlier part-throttle upshifts to suck less fuel. Towing capacity remains at 5000 pounds for V-6 models. Optional for V-6 models only is on-demand AWD that operates in front-drive mode unless slippage is detected. A locking mode is standard, though. Four-cylinder EPA estimates remain the same as last year’s at 20/25 mpg, but the V-6 numbers jump slightly to 19/25 for front-drive models and 18/24 for AWDs. A three-motor AWD gas-electric version of the 2014 Highlander (rated at 27 city/28 highway) will also be available, but we haven’t yet had a chance to test that one.

More Fortitude, Less Float

Once on the road, the measures Toyota has taken to quiet the Highlander’s cabin are immediately apparent. The hushed demeanor and a feeling of structural fortitude are primary takeaways. The new trailing-arm double-wishbone rear suspension is primarily a space-saving design, but that setup’s improved camber control in concert with reduced friction in the vehicle’s variable-boost electric steering gear delivers linear response at turn in and weights up reasonably well at highway speeds. (In layman’s terms, that means it’s more accurate to place in parking lots and around town while requiring less steering corrections on the freeway.) The Highlander feels quite stable at speed. Torque steer still rears its ugly head at wide-open-throttle downshifts on front-drive Highlanders, and feedback from the steering wheel is minimal. Also, the Highlander’s brakes, while easy to modulate, lack top-of-pedal crispness. The good news is the 2014 model’s body motions are better controlled and ride frequencies are a bit shorter in amplitude, providing a major contrast to the floatier feel of previous models. Opportunities to tackle twisty back roads were nonexistent during the press event in historic Charleston, S.C., so we’re looking forward to flogging one mercilessly on our home turf soon.

While the new Highlander does wear some fancier duds, ultimately it remains the trusty minivan surrogate that it’s always been, and that Toyota needs it to be. Need more proof? To advertise this model to the masses, Toyota’s Super Bowl ad for the Highlander featured the family-friendly Muppets rather than, say, burly images of adventure. (It did have a burly and shirtless Terry Crews, though.) That strategy makes sense, of course—they sell these things by the boatload, and Mom Bomb or not, no one at Toyota would dare fix what wasn’t broken.

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